Vol. 41:2 (2020) ► pp.131–161
Code-switching in online academic discourse
Resources for Philippine English
World Englishes are the product of contact between English and other languages in multilingual habitats through the nativization phase. Yet the actual contexts of code-switching that contribute to the emerging regional variety have scarcely been described. This research focuses on code-switching among bilingual Filipino students, to illuminate this dynamic phase in varietal evolution. Using data from an online academic forum, it analyses the code-switching patterns within and between turns in the discussion, to see how they facilitate or inhibit the mobilization of Tagalog elements into code-mixed English. The data show intense levels of code-switching especially within individual turns. At the change of turns, the sequentiality principle is often set aside, and code-switching often involves Tagalog discourse markers and other function words. These include some elements noted two decades earlier (Bautista 1998) as potential features of evolving Philippine English, which have never been codified. The new data provide empirical evidence of how non-English elements are progressively taken up into World Englishes, in interactive use of English among bi-/multilingual speakers.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction: Code-switching and the development of new Englishes
- 2.The communicative functions of code-switching
- 2.1Code-switching and its constraints in face-to-face interactions
- 2.2Code-switching in online groups: Social functions and linguistic aspects
- 2.3Code-switching in individual outputs and at turn changes
- 2.4Summary and research questions
- 3.Methodology
- 3.1Participants and participation
- 3.2Sociolinguistic survey and focus group discussion
- 3.3Online data collection
- 3.4Analysis of online discussion data
- 4.Overall findings
- 5.The functions of code-switching in different locations
- 5.1Intra-utterance and intra-turn code-switching
- 5.2Inter-turn code-switching
- 5.3Inter-thread code-switching
- 6.Discussion of findings
- 7.Conclusions
- Notes
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Sources -
References
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.00044.lis
References
Sources
Language data from the forum is held as a corpus by the lead author, as is the sociolinguistic data in responses to the LAQ questionnaire, the post-discussion chat, and transcriptions of the focus group discussions.